Syriana

No one-sentence synopsis is possible, but here’s a stab: A bunch of people, played by George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Christopher Plummer and others, stalk around looking serious and doing stuff. Writer-director Stephen Gaghan’s geopolitical drama makes not one iota of sense, geopolitically or dramatically. But it’s easy to spot the bad guys: They work for oil companies, and the depth of their villainy is directly proportional to the thickness of their Texas accents. The action flits from Texas to Washington to a Neverland Persian Gulf where only CIA treachery prevents the flowering of enlightened monarchies; suicide bombers attack oil tankers rather than buses, weddings and pizza parlors; and the name of Israel (Zionist Entity, Occupied Palestine—call it what you will) is never mentioned.